Just like with other styles, your ideal mentor will depend on your personal tastes. Wes and Django are both excellent guitarists and would be great candidates to learn from. But with so many good jazz guitarists out there, the best thing is to listen to a lot of music and find someone who sounds good to you. Check out Les Paul, John Scofield, Chet Atkins, Pat Metheny, Charlie Christian, Kenny Burrell, and Charlie Hunter for example.

There are tons of standards to choose from, so instead of just saying "Autumn Leaves" or "All the Things You Are," I'd suggest buying a Real Book (http://www.amazon.com/Real-Book-Hal-Leonard-Corporation/dp/0634060384), which is just a compilation of literally hundreds of jazz standards.

As far as techniques, there are again so many to choose from. But when it comes down to it there are 2 key things to work on: chords and soloing. You'll want to be very familiar with four part chords: how they're constructed, the available tensions, and how to play them in every position, inversion, etc. With practice, you can sight read a jazz tune and voicelead the chords, adding tensions where appropriate for color.

You're going to want to learn how to solo over changes. You can't just bust out those blues licks anymore when playing jazz. Jazz solos are built around chord tones and tensions in addition to chord scales and modes, with things like chromatic passing tones and approach notes to construct the lines and licks.

If you're not looking to find a teacher, I'd recommend buying an instructional book or two to help get you started.

Asker's Rating:

Permalink | Report